Tag: Bill Connelly

Johnny Manziel named to ESPN’s top 80 quarterbacks list of the 2000’s

Ranking the Top 80 quarterback since the year 2000, Texas A&M legend Johnny Manziel’s 2-year run was dutifully recognized.

Former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was pure electricity on the field during his two-year career in College Station, and outside of the extracurriculars that led to his short NFL career, Aggie fans remember the young man who elevated the program nationally.

This week, ESPN’s Bill Connelly released its “Top 80 quarterbacks of the 2000s” rankings (subscription required), including nearly every impact signal caller that college football fans remember spanning 24 years cut. At the same time, Manziel surprisingly didn’t make the Top 10, landing at No. 13 right below former Texas Longhorns QB Colt McCoy (of course).

Like all of us, Connelly remembers the whirlwind of Manziel’s freshman season, which included defeating No. 1 Alabama on the road while earning the Heisman Trophy and destroying the Oklahoma Sooners in the Cotton Bowl to end the year.

“Texas A&M won 20 games in the Johnny Football era, beat Alabama (and nearly did so twice), and immediately put to rest any silly “Yeah, but can that Big 12 offense work in the
SEC?” qualms as the Aggies joined the league. But that alone doesn’t describe just how much one player could dominate the sport’s consciousness over multiple seasons. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him because you really, really needed to see what he might do next.”

During his two historic seasons, Manziel recorded 7,820 passing yards (69% completion percentage), 63 passing touchdowns, and just 22 interceptions, coupled with 2,169 rushing yards and 30 scores on the ground.

Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes, and opinions. Follow Cameron on Twitter: @CameronOhnysty.

College Football: Initial SP+ Top 25 Released for 2024

What will the 12-team field look like in 2024?

“Way too early” college football projections and rankings have been out since before the national championship even got underway back in January and we tend to soak all of them up.

Along those lines, Bill Connelly released his first SP+ projections on Valentine’s Day.  His SP+ projections are used as a predictive measure, not as a traditional top 25 rankings method.

SP+ brings in returning production, recruiting and transfer portal successes, and recent team success (or lack thereof) into account to determine its rankings.

So what did Connelly’s rankings say about Notre Dame and the rest of the top 25 in mid-February?

Below is how the top 25 checked in and included are overall, offense, defense, and special teams rankings on SP+.

Where the Aggies rank among their peers in ESPN’s SP+ metrics

Where does Texas A&M land in ESPN’s newest SP+ returning production rankings among the rest of the SEC ahead of the 2024 CFB season?

The 2024 college football season will be filled with storyline after storyline, led by conference realignment and the first year for the expanded 12-team playoff structure.

For Texas A&M, new head coach Mike Elko has already proven his recruiting prowess after signing the Aggies’ three remaining targets, including 2024 5-star athlete Terry Bussey, 4-star wide receiver Ashton Bethel-Roman, and 3-star offensive tackle Robert Bourdon.

Concerning the 2024 season, coupled with the returning veterans, Elko has already acquired 22 players from the transfer portal, led by sophomore Edge Nic Scourton, who Purdue and the Big 10 in sacks (10) during the 2023 season.

With starting quarterback Conner Weigman set to return after missing most of last season due to injury, the Aggies have already received plenty of preseason hype, and according to Fan Duel, Texas A&M is predicted to win an average of 8.5 games in 2024, while Weigman is a +1800 bet to win the Heisman trophy.

However, what sets A&M apart from the rest of the SEC is their returning production on both sides of the ball outside of Weigman and the transfer portal additions, including the entire starting offensive line and a bulk of the defensive line, led by senior DL Shemar Turner.

Providing the metrics to back it up, ESPN’s Bill Connelly released his newest SP+ rankings, but the question remains: where do the Agges land in the SEC for returning production next season?

Texas A&M is ranked as a Top 18 team in ESPN’s returning production rankings for the 2024 CFB season

Ahead of HC Mike Elko’s first season at the helm, Texas A&M is ranked in the Top 18 in Bill Connelly’s (ESPN) returning production rankings.

Texas A&M Football is entering a new era under head coach Mike Elko, as his inaugural 2024 season is now just seven months away, and Aggie fans couldn’t be more excited to see what he can bring to the job.

While A&M’s 2024 schedule avoids the likes of Alabama and Ole Miss for the first time since entering the SEC more than a decade ago, it’s the wealth of returning production, including gaining 22 players through the transfer portal over the last two months.

On Monday, ESPN’s Bill Connelly released his annual SP+ ratings rankings (subscription required) for the 2024 college football season, as the creator of one of the more accurate returning production models has the Aggies ranked 18th out of 134 FBS teams. According to Connelly, A&M leads the SEC with a returning production rate of 72% and an offensive (77%) and defensive (67%) return rating ranked 22nd and 35th in the country.

As noted in the article, the Aggies’ incoming transfers count in the returning production rating, led by former Purdue Edge Nic Scourton, who led the Big 10 in sacks (10) during the 2023 season.

To clarify things, here is how each position group will potentially look ahead of the spring football season starting next month.

ESPN ranks the best college football teams of every decade – Where did Texas A&M land?

ESPN used their SP+ rankings to highlight the best college football teams over the decades, and of course Texas A&M found themselves well-represented throughout history.

Being a fan in the landscape of college football is not for the faint of heart, or at the very least, for someone that emphasizes parity.

The worst-kept secret in the sport is that the number of viable title contenders each season can be counted on the palm of your hand. The most dominant football programs have typically been concentrated in just a few conferences, and that statement has rung true for much of the last decade.

But the history of college football is vast, so does that statement carry the same amount of weight in say, the 1920s, as it does today? To answer that question, ESPN and Bill Connelly are turning toward their staple SP+ rankings.

As Connelly notes in his piece, he’s updating his method for crunching these figures that differ from his typical weekly SP+ rankings:

While the version of SP+ presented weekly during a given season is based on a large number of predictive factors, I have come up with a version based solely on points scored and allowed that, at the lower levels of the sport, can serve to make solid projections. I applied those same methods to the games going back to 1883, when football’s scoring rules became mostly what they are now. (You can find all ratings here.)

Starting with the 1920s, I looked at which teams most thoroughly dominated the sport from decade to decade, using SP+ percentile averages for each team and each decade. How much do these lists change over the decades? What can these averages tell us about how things have evolved over the past 100 years and how much things are evolving now?

With Texas A&M football boasting a vast history of success on the gridiron, it should come as no surprise to see them well-represented in Connelly’s decades’ rankings. The Maroon and White are just one of four teams to show up in the top 10 for at least one decade, with much praise handed out to their vaunted defenses over the years.

Let’s dive in and see how the Aggies compare with some of the most successful college football teams over the last 100 years, based on SP+:

ESPN’s Bill Connelly: What on Earth has happened to Oklahoma?

ESPN’s Bill Connelly looked at what’s happened to the Oklahoma Sooners.

The college football world is in shock at the last three weeks of football put on display by the Sooners. It’s an indictment of the level of consistency and steady play the rest of college football has come to expect from the Oklahoma Sooners.

The losses have piled up as Oklahoma welcomes the No. 20 Kansas Jayhawks to Norman for Homecoming weekend. Everyone’s trying to figure out what’s gone wrong with the Oklahoma Sooners.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly, a senior staff writer is equally as curious in his Week 6 takeaways. In the piece for ESPN+, Connelly asks, “What on earth has happened to Oklahoma?”

Having posted SP+ projections against the lines for about a decade now, I can confidently say that the books are smarter than they’ve ever been. The lines are extraordinarily hard to beat in volume, even compared to just a few years ago. And they have not been able to keep up with the velocity of Oklahoma’s collapse. Just three weeks ago, Brent Venables’ first Sooners team was 3-0 and coming off of a rousing rivalry win at Nebraska. Favored by 10.5 points, the Sooners had won by a 49-14 margin, and they were 13.5-point home favorites against a Kansas State team that had just lost to Tulane.
We can tell how uniquely bad this stretch has been from the company OU is currently keeping. In the past three decades, only four once-ranked teams have underachieved by more over a three-game span. Two of them fired their coaches (1997 Texas, 2005 Colorado), and the other two probably should have. Bob Toledo survived a 4-7 collapse at UCLA in 1999 because he was coming off back-to-back top-10 finishes. But he went just 20-15 over the next three seasons and was fired. Tommy Tuberville and Texas Tech, meanwhile, pulled the same act the following season: The Red Raiders started 6-1, then lost four of five before Tuberville left for Cincinnati. In all four of these instances, the coaches had been in their jobs for a while, and the sudden collapses were signs of an ending, either soon or on the horizon. If we focus specifically on teams that collapse in their head coach’s first seasons, things get much, much darker. – Connelly, ESPN

Bill Connelly’s explanation paints a picture of unprecedented happenings for Oklahoma, and the fact that it is happening for a first-year head coach makes it that much more alarming. Only three coaches in the last thirty years have performed worse against the spread in a three-game stretch than Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners.

The five names surrounding Venables’ are five of the least successful hires college football has seen in that time span. Those coaches went a combined 38-170 — the equivalent of 2-10 seasons ad infinitum. None won more than four games in a season.

Granted, none of these men were coaching Oklahoma, either. Those five poor individuals were taking on some of the hardest jobs in the country, and while they performed terribly, the floor in Norman — where the Sooners have finished under .500 just five times since World War II — is quite a bit higher. – Connelly, ESPN

There’s a conversation to be had about the media’s projections and predictions of Oklahoma heading into the season and even the general pulse of the Oklahoma fan base as well. Most thought the best-case scenario for this team was a Big 12 Championship Game.

While that is all but mathematically off the table, the next best case for Oklahoma is to show resiliency and improvement and scrap for a bowl game and probably an 8-4 record.

It’s a stark contrast, but in hindsight, this was more likely a realistic scenario. Oklahoma’s losses over the winter from a head coach to the players lost via the transfer portal and to the NFL were seismic, and the returns never leveled out. Add that to a staff led by a first-year head coach in a conference that also got better in the same time frame, and look at what you have in front of you.

All is not lost in Oklahoma, and there’s no reason to think they can’t bounce back. They will, but it will take time.

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Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today. You can also follow Bryant on Twitter @thatmanbryant.

ESPN slots Oklahoma at No.4 in their power rankings following first week of season

Fresh off their 45-13 win vs. UTEP, Oklahoma finds itself at No.4 in the ESPN College Football Power Rankings as they look to Kent State.

Week one of the college football season has officially ended after the last game of the week saw Clemson beat Georgia Tech reasonably comfortably.

All eyes in college football turn to week two as teams either regroup or look to build on the success they had in week one. For Oklahoma, their eyes shift to the Kent State Golden Flashes, who will make the trip into Norman for a showdown Saturday evening.

Oklahoma is fresh off of a 45-13 victory against the UTEP Miners in Brent Venables’ debut. The Sooners looked better than a few other top 10 teams, and media outlets like ESPN took notice.

ESPN released their college football power rankings following the first week of action. Oklahoma found itself firmly in the top five at No.4. Here’s what Bill Connelly said regarding Oklahoma.

There might not be a better season opener for a head coach than when your team wins easily but experiences some glitches for you to yell about on Sunday. Brent Venables’ debut as OU coach went exactly like that — his Sooners cruised 45-13 over UTEP, with Dillon Gabriel throwing for 223 yards, Eric Gray rushing for 102, and the defense recording six sacks (2.5 from Reggie Grimes). But the Sooners also fell asleep for much of the second quarter, allowing the Miners to stay close approaching halftime. Still, when you average 8.1 yards per play and your opponent averages 3.8, it was a good day at the office. – Bill Connelly, ESPN

Connelly is spot-on. In week one, there’s no such thing as a perfect team. Hardly anyone is tested. It takes multiple games to develop your identity. The Sooners looked good, considering some of the starters they had to replace from last year’s team and the coaching turnover.

However, Connelly’s right about that odd stretch in the second quarter. That lull reminded folks of the big-lead letdowns experienced far too often under the previous regime. While it’s too early to determine if that’s problematic, it gives the coaching staff a nice collection of teachable moments.

They also held stuff back from the game plan on offense and defense. So in many ways, we didn’t get the best performance out of Oklahoma because they didn’t need to empty the playbook to beat UTEP.

That time will come, providing a more thorough evaluation of this team.

The only teams ahead of Oklahoma are projected College Football Playoff contenders, such as Georgia at No. 1, Alabama at 2, and Ohio State at 3. Oklahoma has a long way to go, but to be included in a group with the powers in college football could give us a glimpse of what this team could be. Oklahoma team may have a shot to do an extraordinary thing or two.

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Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today. You can also follow Bryant on Twitter @thatmanbryant.

ESPN lists “The 10 games that explain the downfall of Nebraska football”

Painful memories over the last 20 years!

How did we get here? How did Nebraska Football get to this point? How did a program with five National Champions and 46 conference championships has fall so far? It’s been a decade since Nebraska even played for a conference title and over two decades since they won one. ESPN’s Bill Connelly did some of the heavy lifting and has listed the ten games that he believes best explain the downfall of Nebraska Football.

Connelly believes that the program has been unable to build an effective plan for its future and has been unable to build a modern program as a result.

Nebraska has attempted many resets and fresh starts since the retirement of the legendary Tom Osborne. But it has lacked a cogent plan, it has been torn between the distinct style of its past winners and the modern style of the day, and it has lots of former players hovering around and pointing out everything it is doing wrong at all times.

Here are the ten games that show how and why the fall of Nebraska football has taken place.

 

Where Notre Dame landed on ESPN’s SP+ projections

A bit different from the major polls

The final SP+ projections by ESPN’s Bill Connelly have been released. This metric is based on three main aspects of a team: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history. Find out below where Notre Dame ranked among that Top-10.

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See where Wisconsin football lands in the final ESPN SP+ preseason projections

See where the Wisconsin Badgers landed in Bill Connelly’s final ESPN SP+ preseason projections:

On Sunday morning, ESPN writer, Bill Connelly, released his final preseason SP+ projections for the upcoming college football season and the Wisconsin Badgers landed at No. 17.

Related: Wisconsin Badgers RB commit Nate White has a monster season opener

The Badgers were previously ranked at No. 10 by Connelly but have since dropped seven spots in the final projections. Wisconsin is among several Big Ten schools near the top of the rankings including Ohio State(No. 3), Michigan(No. 6), Penn State(No. 13) and Michigan State(No. 15).

It is a surprise to see the Badgers drop so far from earlier this summer in the final projections, but hopefully, they will prove projections wrong this upcoming season.

Below you can see the rest of Bill Connelly’s SP+ projections: